Breakups don’t just break your heart — they hijack your nervous system. If you’ve been lying awake at night, replaying every conversation, or struggling to focus at work, you’re not broken. You’re in survival mode. In this episode, I’ll show you why your body reacts this way after a breakup and share three simple nervous system resets that actually work: a cross-body hug, Navy SEAL box breathing, and quick bursts of movement. These aren’t about being “soft” — they’re about taking back control so you can sleep, focus, and start rebuilding your life. Listen in, practice one of these tools twice a day this week, and notice how much calmer and stronger you feel.
Come over to instagram and DM me how your self soothing is going: https://www.instagram.com/sarahcurnoles/
If you want deeper support, personalized plans, and accountability so that you actually see real change, book a free consultation call to see if working with me as your life coach is the right step for you: https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=13002720&appointmentType=2184073
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Have you gone through a breakup and you're tired of feeling low lonely or lost? I've got a pep talk for you. I'm Sarah Curnoles, your breakup bestie. I'm a certified life coach with years of coaching experience, helping people just like you turn your breakup into the best thing that ever happened to them. Each week, tune in to get a pep talk, to heal your heart. Let go of the past, reclaim your power and get back into your main character energy. Your breakup may have shattered your world as you know it, but together let's build a new better world. Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hello, my friends, Sarah Curnoles here, and I want you to think of me as your best friend to help you through this breakup. I am coming to you today from Bristol, England, and it's the home to some of Banks's original graffiti street art, and it has been very inspiring because Banksy was, he's always been anonymous or she, we don't even know. The artist has always been anonymous. They've been creative and it's often unexpected and thought provoking, and I actually want to take you on a six week journey on this podcast that I hope will be creative, thought provoking, and unexpected. I want to help you get over your x and I want to take you week by week something specific that you can focus on that is going to sound probably very small, but if you do it, if you implement it, it will make a big difference.
(01:52)
So for those of you that take me up on this and he'll actually try it, I really would love to connect with you because I know if you do this, it's actually going to make a big difference in your life. Please come over to Instagram. It's just my name at Sarah Kernels, and I'll put this in the show notes and DM me. I want to hear your story of what change you're noticing week to week as you start implementing these things. And I also want to say I am taking private clients right now. I have some openings on my calendar where I have availability to take some individual coaching clients. So if you want personalized advice, if you want accountability to make sure you actually do what I'm going to tell you to do, if you want pretty much a person in your pocket who's always there, who's always available to cheer you on, that is what you get with coaching.
(02:51)
You get that support, you get that level of personalization, that individual attention and customization so that I can help you exactly where you're at. So we are going on a six week journey. I am assuming probably the breakup is somewhat recent or that you've been suffering for a long, long time and you're really stuck in that place where you can't sleep, you can't focus at work. It feels like your brain has been hijacked by thoughts of your ex, right? That's where I assume that you and I are starting together on this journey. Okay? So please join me, listen in for this. In the next five weeks for this six week journey, I'm going to give you one specific thing. Every single week and this week, we are kicking it off with the number one problem that I have to help everybody with. So if you feel like you've been hijacked by thoughts of your ex and you're really struggling to do normal functions, I want you to know there's nothing wrong with you. This is actually purely a biological response. This is not a character flaw. This isn't that you're broken. This is simply your nervous system in overdrive. So let me start with a story.
(04:30)
I've had an anxious attachment style in the past that I've been doing a lot of work on healing, but what that does for me when there's conflict, when there's a breakup, my nervous system goes into overdrive and it does feel like it's been hijacked. I can't sleep because all I do is I replay the fight over and over and over again because I'm trying to solve it. I'm trying to figure out what I could have done differently to prevent it. I try to look for how can I fix this now? And I also use it to be really hard on myself, to beat myself up, to criticize myself, show all the reasons why I'm not really worthy of love anyway. Why would anybody want to be with me? This sounds super fun, doesn't it? What I have learned to do and what I figured out after my last breakup was what I can't do is what I had been doing.
(05:31)
I had been trying to solve my problems by thinking it through, by analyzing, by processing, by talking it out and venting it. This is actually ineffective because it isn't a thinking problem. Like I said, it's a biological problem. And so you're not going to solve a biology problem with your thoughts unless you're still back in high school and you're taking a biology exam and you have to memorize facts. That's not what I'm talking about. The problem is in your body. It's not in your mind. And so what I learned to do was to create a system for self-soothing and giving myself the comfort that I needed so that my body could feel safe again. And after I established a level of safety and after I had a system to self-soothe, then I was able to go and process and analyze and solve any problems that there were.
(06:38)
And what this looked like was I was able to create more peace and more calm for myself. And I've been dating a little bit in the past, I don't know, year, and they haven't worked out. Sometimes I end the relationships, sometimes the other person ends the relationship, and even the ones where I was really excited and he was the one to end it with me, I was able to hold myself through the disappointment and allow myself to feel that and allow myself to feel disappointed and heartbroken and sad without it completely derailing me for months like it used to. I can usually move through it in a couple of days to a week, which is much, much, much shorter. And I'm a sensitive person, so I know people that can move through this much faster than I can once they have the tools, but I'm pretty sensitive.
(07:35)
I feel pretty deeply. So it takes me a couple days, but I share all that to let you know that me as a highly sensitive person, a highly emotional person, and an anxious person if I can figure this out. So what are we talking about here? Your nervous system is the part of your own personal biology that is not only hardwired as an animal, like animals have their own survival instincts and their ways that they go about the world and interacting with the world, but it also has stored all of your past experiences and has created conclusions based on your experiences about what is safe for you and what is unsafe safe. Unfortunately, it's not always accurate. Sometimes it's really inaccurate.
(08:41)
But what we need to do, because this is your system for establishing whether you're safe or unsafe, it's also highly tied to your stress response to think fight or flight, freeze or fawn. That's all tied into your nervous system. What is happening when you go through a breakup is you are going through a very uncertain, unstable time, and there is a lot of change, and your nervous system is on high alert because change and uncertainty equals stress, which equals the threat of death. That's why it feels like you've been hijacked. This feels like a time of high stress. And so you're on high alert and you're also kicking in all the times from your past experiences where you've been rejected, where you've been abandoned, where things didn't go your way and you felt disappointed. And it is showing you, depending on what your narrative is, it's showing you all these examples of your failures, which is why a lot of times people come to me with a story, I'm a loser, I'm a failure. Why can't I keep a relationship? What's wrong with me? Because your brain has this old programming that tells it to look for those examples of looking for all those times where my relationships failed. Here's another example.
(10:15)
So what we have to do first is we have to calm the animal body that you currently have before we can deal with those thoughts. If you are in fight flight freezer, fawn mode, which is your stress response, which is very normal in a breakup and after time's a big change, we have to reestablish, I am safe. There is no threat here. There are no lions, tigers, or bears. I am okay. So how do we do that? There are many ways that we can do that, but I'm going to give you just a couple and I want you to pick one that you like. I'm going to give you three. So you might want to try all three to see which one you like the most, but your job is only going to be to practice one. And the sole goal of practicing these is I want you to rate your stress level from one to 10 before you do the exercise, and then I want you to rate it again afterwards. So right now you to level one to 10, one being low, 10 being high, where is your stress level? Go ahead and rate it and then we'll do it again afterwards.
(11:51)
So there are a few things you can do to reassure yourself that you are safe. The first one is a cross body hug where you put your right hand on your left shoulder and your left hand on your right shoulder, and you're going to give yourself a nice tight squeeze and you're going to say, I am okay. I am safe. Nothing has gone wrong here. I maybe don't have the result that I want. Maybe I wanted this relationship to last, but I am okay. I will be okay. All is well. Whatever string of calming, soothing phrases you want to say, give those to yourself while giving yourself this nice deep hug.
(12:45)
Okay, option number two, you are going to try a breath control exercise, and this is a box breathing that actually they use this for navy seals to stay calm in high stress situations. And really all I want you to do is you're just going to focus, bring your focus very clearly on each individual part of this. It's called the box because I always think about drawing a box while I do it. There are four steps and everything gets held for the count of four. So the first step is you're going to inhale for the count of four, so try it with me. Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, hold for 4, 4, 3, 2, 1. Exhale for 4, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hold empty for 4, 4, 3, 2, 1. Okay? Do that on your own rhythm and do it for a few repetitions.
(14:06)
Okay? Your third option is going to be actually more of a high energy option. Sometimes we don't want something that's super calming. We need to expel excess energy. We need to get rid of it. So you are going to do a burst of energy. You can do that either by shaking, shake your hands, shake your arm, shake your legs, shake your body, shake your head, shake your shoulders, shake as hard as you can. You could do pushups, you could do jumping jacks, you can do squats, air squats, whatever. You won't need burst of activity. That feels exhausting in a short period of time. Sometimes I like to put on a song while I do this. What that does is it discharges stress hormones and releases it that you might do something that's very high energy and then you might need to ground yourself. So maybe do the high energy burst and then try the box breathing. Okay? So again, try either a combination of these things, try one of them, and then rate your stress level one to 10. How do you feel?
(15:25)
You can take a couple breaths, let it integrate, see what happens. And so the goal here is to decrease your stress so that you can come back down into your body and know that you are safe, okay? I want you to be able to get sleep. I want you to be able to eat and to nourish yourself. I want you to be able to go to work, to be with your friends, these things, getting back into things that are nourishing for you through your sleep, through your food, through your friends, through your connections, through your purpose. These also heal you on a deep level, but it's really hard to do them when your nervous system has been hijacked and you're in a period of high stress.
(16:25)
So we need to bring that down first, and then you want to focus on, I want to get a good night's sleep. I want to make sure I'm eating. I want to make sure I'm drinking water. I want to make sure I'm taking a shower and brushing my teeth and taking care of my hygiene. All of that stuff is really important and restorative. Okay, so that's your simple tip for this week. We're going to take care of your nervous system. I want you to practice this twice a day for the next seven days, starting today, okay? You're going to do it twice today, twice tomorrow, until the next podcast comes out, and I want to hear from you maybe after three or four days, drop into my dms on Instagram at Sarah KLEs and let me know how is it going for you? What is happening?
(17:16)
I cannot wait for you to see these results, and if you take me up on this, if you practice this, I promise you're going to start seeing a difference, okay? Alright, my friends, you are not broken. Your body and your brain right now think you've gone through the equivalent of a car accident or a big fight. That's how it's processing it. It just needs to be brought back down to a restorative so that it's okay. I'm okay. I'm going to get through this because you are. I know that you are, because on the other side of this, if you do this nervous system work, what is available to you is that you will feel calmer, you will feel more focused, but you're also going to come out of this a little bit stronger because your energy isn't going to be so diffused and all over the place, you'll be able to focus again.
(18:24)
This is about building your resilience by starting with the foundation. Just like if you were at the gym building muscle, you want to start the foundation with good movement patterns. So your mobility is the foundation in the gym, just like your nervous system is the foundation in your emotional life. If you want to go even deeper with this, if you want a personalized plan, I am here for you, and this is what I do for people all the time. It's my jam. I love it, and I really love helping people through this and sticking to it and getting them results as quickly as possible because you do not need to suffer for weeks or months or years. I had somebody reach out to me the other day who's been suffering for eight years. You're not alone. I did that too. So I don't want you there.
(19:24)
I have availability for private clients. Please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram if you want more information about that. I'm also going to put in a link so that you can directly book a consultation call with me that is totally free, no obligation. I can explore ways to personally help you and help you solve your problems and what that would look like if we did it together. Okay? My friends, I want to hear from you, whether it's on Instagram, whether it's on a consultation. Please reach out and let's talk soon. Okay? All right. Go take care of yourself. Take care of your nervous system and let me know how it goes. Have a great week. I.